The demand for wireless mobile communications services is growing at an explosive rate, with the anticipation that communication to a mobile device anywhere on the globe at all times will be available in the near future. An array of antennas mounted on vehicles, ships, aircraft, satellites, and base stations is expected to play an important role in fulfilling the increased demand of channel requirement for these services, as well as for the realization of the dream that a portable communications device the size of a wristwatch be available at an affordable cost for such services. This paper is the first of a two-part study. It provides a comprehensive treatment, at a level appropriate to nonspecialists, of the use of an antenna array to enhance the efficiency of mobile communications systems. It presents an overview of mobile communications as well as details of how an array may be used in various mobile communications systems, including land-mobile, indoor-radio, and satellite-based systems. It discusses advantages of an array of antennas in a mobile communications system, highlights improvements that are possible by using multiple antennas compared to a single antenna in a system, and provides details on the feasibility of antenna arrays for mobile communications applications.

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Applications of antenna arrays to mobile communications. I. Performance improvement, feasibility, and system considerations

Market expectations for third-generation mobile radio systems (IMT-2000) show an increasing demand for a wide range of services from voice to low, high, and advanced data rate services to support mobile multimedia. This leads to technical requirements for IMT-2000 which are currently being standardized worldwide. Circuit- and packet-oriented services will be supported. These systems will operate in all radio environments to provide service to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The ITU has identified spectrum for the allocation of IMT-2000. However, these frequency bands are currently not available worldwide. In different regions research activities on IMT-2000 have been initiated to support the international consensus building process and standardization activities. Based on these activities system proposals have been submitted to ITU TG 8/1. In particular, the newly formed Third Generation Partnership Projects 3GPP and 3GPP2 have the objective of harmonizing similar proposals and defining detailed standards. Proposals from Europe, Japan, Korea, and the United States are very similar. The evolution and migration of second-generation systems to the third generation takes into account the deployed investment to save today's investment where useful and necessary. This article focuses on market and technical requirements and, in particular, the technical approach of 3GPP based on the big footprint of the GSM system.

The 3GPP proposal for IMT-2000

The intelligent transportation systems (ITS) use advanced communications and control technologies to improve current transportation systems. To achieve many ITS applications, the ability to exchange messages between vehicles is necessary. This is generally required as inter vehicle communication (IVC). IVC can be considered as a special case of ad hoc networks, where nodes only move along predefined road paths. We propose new broadcast protocols that make use of global positioning system (GPS) information to enhance the performance of broadcast service in IVC. The ability to efficiently broadcast messages is necessary for any communications in IVC (e.g, updating routing tables, etc). We propose two algorithms that effectively reduce the number of re-broadcast messages without affecting the number of hosts (vehicles) that receive the broadcast. The simulation results show up to several hundred percentage of bandwidth utilization improvement can be achieved by our proposed broadcast protocols.

GPS-based message broadcast for adaptive inter-vehicle communications

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have become a focus for many countries. To achieve ITS, Inter Vehicle Communication (IVC) is required for the exchange and distribution of data such as congestion or emergency information. If this communication can be done without fixed infrastructure, the systems can be deployed quickly and on a larger scale. Ad hoc networking technologies are one such technology to achieve IVC. However, if generic ad hoc network solutions are applied directly to IVC, performance can degrade quickly as the system scales particularly for broadcast type messages. In this paper we propose two new broadcast protocols that reduce bandwidth required for broadcast communication by taking advantage of a vehicle's highly directional movement and Global Positioning Information. To show the performance of our new protocols, we compare our approach with generic ad hoc broadcasting techniques. Our results show that it is possible to achieve several hundred percent improvement of bandwidth utilization with very slight sacrifice of reachability.

GPS-based message broadcasting for inter-vehicle communication

An overview of third-generation wireless personal communications is presented, and the challenges to meet its demands are examined. At the ITU level, the third generation is known as IMT-2000. In Europe, the third generation of wireless personal communications is known as UMTS. Special attention has been paid in giving a brief description of the research and development, standardization, and regulatory activities. The UMTS terrestrial radio access (UTRA) concept is presented. The different ACTS projects involved in making UMTS a success are introduced.

An overview of third-generation wireless personal communications: a European perspective

Vast importance is being placed in Europe on the development of third-generation mobile telecommunications systems, since it is expected that mobile and personal communications will become a key driver for growth and innovation in the next millenium as well as being a necessary building block of the wireless information society. Significant progress has been made since 1988 by a number of European Union funded R&D projects working toward the development of future generations of mobile communication concepts, systems, and networks. The ACTS (Advanced Communications Technologies and Services) program will offer, in the period 1995-1998, service providers, communications operators, and equipment manufacturers greater opportunities to master and trial mobile and personal communications services and technologies. From the user's perspective the ACTS program will strive to ensure that current mobile services are extended to include multimedia and broadband services, that access to services are made without regard to the underlying networks, and that convenient, lightweight, compact, and power-efficient terminals adapt automatically to whatever air-interface parameters are appropriate to the user's location and desired services.

J.S. Dasilva

Papers

European third-generation mobile systems